[Dovecot] Idea: POP3 deletion as a flag

[Oscar del Rio]

On 03/05/2013 12:14 PM, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> GMail doesn't delete mails when POP3 client issues a DELE command for it. Instead they just become invisible for future POP3 sessions, but they still exist for IMAP/webmail. The same could be implemented pretty easily for Dovecot:
>
>   - Add a new setting to enable this: pop3_deleted_flag = $POP3Deleted
>   - When DELEting a message, add this flag to the message.
>   - When listing messages, skip all messages that have this flag.
>   - Also hide this flag from IMAP clients(?)
>
> Thoughts? Probably 20 lines of new code.
>
>

Outlook live.com webmail has a special (virtual) folder called 
Deleted/POP and the following option:

"If you use POP to download Outlook messages to another program, that 
program could make it so you can't read your messages on Outlook. (For 
example, this might happen if you use Mac Mail or Mozilla Thunderbird.)
- Don't let another program delete messages from Outlook. (If your other 
program is set to "delete messages from the server," we'll simply move 
them to a special POP folder. They won't be deleted.)
- Do what my other program says—if it says to delete messages, then 
delete them. "